Professional Work

03/2009

Cocomore AG, Frankfurt a.M., Germany

Position: Animator - Freelance Contract Work

• Planned and created animations for a web based flash game of the well known brand NESQUIK by Nestle and it's main character QUICKY

05/2008

metricminds, Frankfurt a.M., Germany

Position: Animator - Freelance Contract Work

• Helping out on tight production schedule
• Retargeting, solving and creating final ingame sport animations

since 01/2008

GPI Game Production AG, Cologne, Germany

Position: Animator/Technical Animator - Freelance

• Working on a big sport game project
• Responsible for character and animal related animations
• Contributed on initializing and planning each character animation set
• Setting up and maintaining animation pipeline based on motion capture
• Planned, organized and oversaw mocap shoot and validated delivered data
• Rigging, skinning, setting up characters and animals for animations
• Using keyframe- and offset animation for realistic character animations
• Created scripts for iterative task in Motionbuilder and Maya
• Discussing and solving technical issues
• Undertaking administrative tasks for data management

Special:

• Working on a pitching demo for two weeks
• Responsible for planning and animating the main character
• Rigged, skinned and set up character for animation
• Imported character into the Unreal Engine 3 (Materials/Textures/Animations)
• Animated camera with blends and cuts for the demo scene (Kismet/Matinee)

09/2007

milano medien, Frankfurt a.M., Germany

Position: Animator - Freelance Contract Work

• Created character animation test for client including basic walk, run and idle
• Rigged and skinned character
• Created basic blendshapes for little facial animations
• Used mocap-data for retargeting and finalized animations

03/2006 - 08/2007

metricminds, Frankfurt a.M., Germany

Position: Animator - Freelance

• Mocap-Post-Procession: Data labelling and cleaning / Retargeting and solving
• Creating final ingame animation and additional animation (props etc.)
• Working on a major animation project with over 500 animations

08/2005 - 02/2006

metricminds, Frankfurt a.M., Germany

Position: Animation - Internship

• Preparing mocap-sessions, dealing and working with clients
• Mocap-Operator/ - Runner/ - Technician on set
• Mocap-Post-Procession: Data labelling and cleaning / Retargeting and solving
• Finalizing Character-Animations through offset- and additional prop-animation
• Gained professional experience in several major projects

Education

09/2002 - 08/2007

University of Applied Science Giessen-Friedberg

Degree: Graduate Engineer (Dipl. Ing. FH) - Media Computer Science

• Diploma thesis:
  
  “Automation of the analysis and synthesis of the facial animation system Cheese based on motion capture data”
  
  The goal of the thesis was to demonstrate the possibility of recognizing different facial poses for the face solver Cheese used for facial animation by metricminds (www.metricminds.com). The solver works with facial motion capture data and was programmed for the Maya API. It consists of a node based network of different facial elements similar to the Action Units (AU) used in the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) by Paul Ekman, Wallace V. Friesen, and Joseph C. Hager. Through my research I demonstrated that each individual facial pose could be detected by comparing the motion capture data over time. For this purpose I wrote a MEL-Script that indicates a unique facial pose and its frame throughout a facial range of motion recorded via motion capture.

07/2001 - 04/2002

German military service

• I gained the driver's license for heavy goods vehicles and was responsible for the transportation of hazardous materials (fuel)

1994 - 2001

Gymnasium St. Ursula, Haselünne, Germany

A-Levels

Skills

3D-Animation

Maya (6.X / 7.0 / 8.5 / 2009):

Modeling and texturing

• Basic skills in poly and nurbs modeling
• Basic skills in UV-Layout and shader adjustment

Rigging and skinning

• Professional skills in rigging (Biped, Quadped)
• Professional skills in skinning
• Professional skills to setup different styles of characters

Animation

• Professional skills in animating human and non-human like characters
• Professional experience with Maya's TRAX-/Graph-Editor and Dopesheet
• Experienced in using expressions, constraints and render nodes for animation

Scripting(MEL)

• Scripting iterative procedures, automations and processes
• Scripting for different purposes (e.g. rigging)

Motionbuilder (5.5 / 6.0 / 7.0 / 7.5):

Animation

• Professional skills in keyframe and offset animation for characters and props
• Professional experience with motionblend and story tool

Motion Capture

• Characterization, markerset, retargeting and solving
• Experience with multi character scenes and prop interactions

Scripting

• Scripting for different purposes(Phyton)

Optical motion capture experience:

Technical aspects

• Professional experience with data processing
• Recording and labelling data with Vicon IQ
• Cleaning data with House of Moves Diva for final use

Planning aspects

• Integration of motion capture into established pipeline
• Preparing motion capture shoot and scheduling animation recording
• Working as director on set

Game engines / Developer tools

• Trinigy Vision 7 Game Engine (professional knowledge)
• Unreal Engine 3 (basic knowledge)
• Source engine (basic knowledge)
• NXN Alienbrain
• Tortoise SVN

Graphics / Video / Compositing

• Photoshop 7.0/8.0 (professional knowledge)
• Flash 5/MX/MX 2004 (professional knowledge)
• After Effects 8.0 (basic knowledge)
• Premiere 5.0 (basic knowledge)
• Fusion 5.0 (basic knowledge)

Web

• HTML
• CSS
• PHP
• Java Script
• MySQL

Office tools

• Microsoft Office
• Open Office